


Of The King's Sons

by primeideal



Category: The Horn of Joy - Matthew Maddox
Genre: Documentation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 20:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4320249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/primeideal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An early chapter of "The Horn of Joy;" Madoc visits a soothsayer, attends a funeral, and leaves home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of The King's Sons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



At the joyous age of fifteen years, Madoc, son of Owain, feared little in all of Gwynedd. The earth was rich and put forth plenteous food, and when he journeyed to the coasts, he took delight in the rhythms of the tide. The common people sung his name when he walked among them, and his elder brothers embraced him with the merit due to a king's son. Even the unseen spirits in the land of Cymru treated him lightly, and he worshiped them with reverence.

But Madoc did fear the soothsayer that the courtiers bid him see, the man who shivered under many thick layers and cast an aged eye into his spheres of glass. The future was in his hands, they said, and Madoc ought take heed.

Even a prince obeyed, nodding his respects as he took a seat in a crude chair. “Raise your head,” the soothsayer barked. Madoc did so, letting him gaze from his pale blue eyes to the scrying glass and back again.

“The seasons give way, even as the heat of noon burns away into the cool of the night,” he pronounced. This struck Madoc as a rather vague foretelling of the future, and indeed, hardly worth notice as a summary of the past or present. But he continued, his voice level as she said, “Your father, King Owain, will die.”

Nothing changed. The room was as warm as before, the light in the windows beyond as clear. “Such is the way of all people,” said Madoc. Was this truly what the king's advisors pleaded him learn? Even the most blessed of children knew mortality, spoke of it as a distant abstraction if nothing more.

“And you, little one,” he said, bending towards the glass once more, “shall live out your days far from Gwynedd.”

Leave Gwynedd! As a conqueror or an exile? He blinked, but the seer had turned away, unfocused. “Is that—is that all?” he asked, when his impatience could no longer bear the silence.

“Much shall pass between that day and this, between one leavetaking and the next, but who am I to speak of such things?” he mused in what Madoc rather hoped was a rhetorical tone. “Children shall be born, some place or another, but never without pain. Only silence can bridge one song to the next.”

Madoc, who was decidedly uninterested in abetting childbirth any time in the near future, blushed. “I—thank you for your time.”

“What time I spend is not of my own making, nor any king's design,” he said, “but well met.”

And better parted, Madoc decided. He stormed more than walked through the royal court in the weeks that followed, mostly at the indignity of having his time wasted for no cause. What news, to tell him that his father's fate would be the fate of any man? And what farce, to imagine him cast out of his home?

“So even the fair Madoc scowls!” Gwydyr would only laugh. “Be of good cheer, little brother. Our future is of our own making.”

In this he was content. And in the months that came, there were signs enough to see in Owain that needed no mystic to encrypt—his slowness of foot, his jumble of words. Then did Madoc put aside all thought of what might be, but savored each meal slowly, slicing food one day and offering a shoulder to walk with the next.

It was his older brothers who only seemed more fleet and talkative by comparison. Weapons were bared in the hallways for no reason but to dazzle. Maps were creased and sketched late at night, by candles that died like fireflies under the eyes of princes.

People bowed to the princes, but it was Owain they celebrated. And Madoc, too, they would have sung—not as a warrior, but a statesman all the same. Yet while they loved his father, none of them could share in his suffering. None saw the pain in his limp, heard the gasps of his dwindling proclamations. How could any two people share such a unity, even the closest of brothers? Their homage would not save Owain from the weight of time.

And their joy could not keep Madoc with them, either. In the end it was not the soothsayer's words that made up his mind, but the futures he dreamed all too well on his own. Stay in Gwynedd, contend for a share of the crown, and his brothers would have the better claim, by the standards of law. Those loyal to him would cling to their own flags, and those banners would divide more brothers than the sons of Owain. Perhaps only then could pain be shared. He could not see it done, not in his name.

But when Gwydyr heard of his decision, he only laughed. “You, abandon us? And go where, the kingdoms of the east? They have enough nobles of their own.”

Madoc gestured no. “I will journey to the west, beyond the seas.”

“To emptiness! King of the foam!”

“King or subject. What lands I shall find will be full enough, if my heart has grown strong enough for the voyage.”

Gwydyr could not help but smile once more. “All hail Prince Madoc, truly a ruler without peer.”

After that he had not spoken to his other brothers of his plan, only restating his vow that he did not want to be lord of any lands in particular. They, too, smiled, and turned once again to the maps while Madoc took his leave, singing to a half-deaf father who had never had much time for teaching him lyrics.

The day came, hot and windless, when Gwynedd did bury its king. Enormous crowds walked the earth they knew so well and would pace many times again, lending their voices to the dirge as they watched the body of King Owain descend into the ground for the last time. They mourned his life, they mourned the years of his reign, and the glory he had brought to their land.

And Madoc, standing amid them, mourned too. But he did not weep for the blood and the vision of his father, for Owain's memory and his eyes endured with Madoc, and would remain with him till the ends of the earth. He bade farewell to the land itself, to the stones and trees and wild things that dwelt among them, that could never journey with him. They could not be buried, not by all the armies his brothers amassed, but he alone had to lay them to rest.

It took some time to finish his boat, to dismiss the cartographers who shrugged at fanciful visions in the margins where dragons roared, to stock it with a king's ransom to spare a king's son from the duties of war. But when it was made ready, Madoc found that he and his companions were not alone after all. “Gwydyr? You will make this voyage?”

“What need has Gwynedd for me any longer?” Gwydyr asked, with open hands. “You were right all along, little brother. There are hopes yet unseen, beyond the sun's courses here.”

“Then,” said Madoc, “I shall be right glad of it, for each journey is lessened alone.”

“So let it be,” said Gwydyr.

Madoc paused, inhaling the breeze and the smell of the earth. Perhaps it would serve as a reminder of his birthplace during their travels—more likely, he reasoned, smell would be a foolish memory, the way men took ill at sea. “And here, I suppose, I must defer to you as the elder?”

“With the others far behind us,” Gwydyr mock-whispered, “at last, I can claim the Song of the King's Sons.”

“You _can_ ,” Madoc conceded, “but they've all heard you sing.”

“So jealous?” Gwydyr teased. “My voice carries well:

I stand beside my brothers true, the sons of the same king  
Both free to serve and bound by love, till all our hymns will ring.  
The blood we share is solid ground, a common house we build  
And dwell within a reign of peace, just as our king has willed.”

And as they pushed forward from the shores of Cymru, Madoc beheld the ocean, and saw no visions in the water, no faces to adore. Only the limitless expanse, and into that, he could venture without fear.


End file.
